Thanks to a new initiative from state film organization CNC, more classic and important French films will be digitally restored. Some of the films already approved for restoration are Jacques Tati's Jour de Fete, Mon Oncle and Playtime.

Jacques Deray's long-unavailable The Outside Man (1973) has just been released via MGM MOD. This film sort of fuses the spirit of French crime movies with the landscape of Los Angeles. Though its plot isn't amazing, for me the cinematography elevates the movie and makes it a bit of a stylistic/thematic blood brother to something like Point Blank.

Jean-Louis Trintignant plays a french contract assassin hired by a Los Angeles crime family, ostensibly to perform a hit on some other mafia target. But simultaneously, as he arrives to do his job, a slaying occurs inside the household of the mob boss supposed to employ him. Suspicion is deliberately cast against Trintignant from within that very family. From that moment on, Trintignant is on the run from the police, and the minions of two different mob families. What makes his escape hazardous is that the real murderer shares all the information known about him to aid in his capture and death.